Eric Bana on studying and portraying criminal Mark "Chopper" Read | 60 Minutes Australia

unless my cinematic memories playing tricks on me movies were bigger when i was smaller it was an age of epics with the proverbial cast of thousands movies like ben hur spartacus and the ten commandments well the good news is they're back bigger and better than ever the latest epic is troy that fabled ancient stash between the greeks and the trojans and its credentials are pretty impressive the story lines from none other than homer the ancient greek poet and the cast of thousands includes brad pitt to orlando bloom peter o'toole and wait for it our very own eric banner all my life i've lived by a code and the code is simple honor the gods love your woman and defend your country three and a half thousand years ago the battle for troy was the epic that begat all other records courtesy of the ancient greek poet homer this is a primal story of heroism and valor lust and deceit you'd let troy burn for this woman eventually become a hollywood move modern-day heroes like brad pitt orlando bloom peter o'toole even further from home than those greek invaders australian actor eric troy's mother to us all fight for her it must be quite extraordinary for you yeah little aussie battler right there on the plains of troy surrounded by pedro tool and all those other days it was and that wasn't lost on me i mean not a day went by when you know i wasn't scratching myself saying this is just possibly one of the great stories of all time and one of the great opportunities you know i've seen this moment in my dreams eric banner plays a co-starring role with the trojan prince against brad pitt's portrayal of achilles the hero of the greeks in the film by wolfgang peterson i thought it was you i was fighting yesterday and i wish it had been you i read the script and loved it and i sat down and wolfgang peterson's office and he said so eric you read the script you like it so which character are you interested in playing and i said well if i may say so hector and he said that's great because brad wants to play achilles in other words if you want to play achilles you ain't playing achilles so it just all fell into place luckily i didn't want to play the same character as brad and he didn't want to play hector so i was given the part having so amicably worked out their roles between them two pals then set about bashing one another up we made a pact 50 bucks every time you hit the other guy whoever hits the other person the most gets the purse and i walked away with i think three or four hundred bucks at the end of the hector achilles battle a tiny little scar in my nose and um it's a few bumps and bruises but you know we knew each other well enough to not be too concerned about it a few hundred bucks that would supplement the small feed they gave you for playing the role well exactly exactly i i should have declared it what sort of acceleration do you get obviously a world away in the rolling green countryside of northwest tasmania in the front seat of a racing car it's not fighting bronze age battles this is how eric likes to relax and how did you get into racing i always loved it as a kid and then um i got my first car when i was about 14. is that the car you've still got yeah i still got it it's an old um 74 xb falcon coupe and um me and my buddies just work on it in spare time and it's been a bit of a project and a hobby and i just started racing that that would have been what was known as a hoon mobile still is known as the doom reveal eric is a self-confessed petroleum in addition he says he contracted growing up in the melbourne working-class suburb of talamaru it was all just about riding your bmx bike around the paddocks around broadmeadows and talomarine to keelore and it was a great place to grow up eric's tullamarine was an ethnic melting pot which he later recaptured in his first movie the castle in which he played khan the greek kickboxing accountant did they show a film two two yeah and they also had this uh twister we saw twister and they had these i don't know katrina uh telly and they had easy listening classic gold contemporary rock was you didn't go to uni now your parents had spent quite a bit of money sending to a private school were they a bit worried about this i think my mum and dad have always been a bit worried about me um i think it was a huge relief to them when i said i was going to be a stand-up comedian you know most parents would go what but i think my parents went at last something that he wants to do career a career he could make 60 bucks a week that would be incredible um he'll move out of home hello thanks for joining us and thank you two for the gold logi it's a great honor and as i said on the night as far as i'm concerned there's certainly no shame in being popular stand-up comedy led to sketch comedy and it's here that we first got to know eric banner in the television series full frontal five what essence were you looking for in your impersonation of rain it's funny because it always starts out with the best intentions of being like completely accurate and then you just start getting really bloody silly with it and you end up taking this person who who has some credibility and turning him almost into a kind of a clown figure how many awards have you won in your years no awards right is that right you'd worry about hurting people's feelings no not particularly because um no no because that's not that's not a healthy thing for a sketch comedy performer you're only worried about not being funny unexpectedly mike willis dropped in you say that you never knew how it happened but you did didn't you and he would just leave it there that's good that's it and and say nothing and the person would just kind of be going does he really do impersonations at home oh yeah i get everyone charles we get them all we'll be getting you later eric's wife rebecca has been his constant companion on the magic carpet ride to hollywood i can't even put rebecca on video at home you know and you've just got the first ever television interview so they met while rebecca was working at channel 7 as a publicist tell me about the proposal i believe it was very romantic well we were in aspen and we were skiing which is my favorite thing in the world to do and it was a beautiful beautiful sunny day and um halfway down to run eric said begs just stop for a minute and he pulled out this ring and proposed to me and there was no one around which again is amazing for a skier so it was beautiful and i said yes yeah i proposed at 7 000 feet by the time it got to 2000 feet the wedding was organized get the camera over to bucky bucky get over here here he is young bucky show her your turned over i woke it up king kong filming the true life story chopper in the late 90s was a dramatic turnaround for a young comedian this was much more than an impersonation of the notorious mark chopper ring eric delivered one of the most convincing and frightening performances in an australian film did you study him i did i spent time with him yes yeah how much time a couple of days got a razor blade he wrapped it in toilet paper so how did you work up the character and the voice i find the voice is a a a pretty instinctual oh i said oh my god i said just rip a mouth the thing that helps when you meet someone is you get it you get a sense of the rhythm so initially you might you might think to yourself oh geez i reckon i have a pretty good bloody guy at the voice and then what happens you meet them and then you start being able to get the rhythms you get the rhythms and you start working on it you know what i mean and then you just i don't know obviously the more research you do and the more you you look into these things the stronger your performance gets yeah it'll be very good won't it yeah hey yeah bye i know how to become other people i don't necessarily know how to act you don't think we should be here you know what i think don't really matter what i think if bannon's chopper impressed the australian critics it also impressed hollywood in particular the big time director ridley scott who cast eric in the war movie black hawk down i remember the phone ringing at home and the wife's saying it's ridley scott and much to my astonishment said right so i have this character right great hoot uh like you to play him uh do you think you'd like to do that right and i said i think i'd really like to do that [Music] the next time hollywood phoned it was to play the starring role in the hulk for the hong kong maestro ang lee he's an amazing guy angley come on i'm going for an impersonation oh uh eric i think what we need to do you move the chin down a little bit and we do one more take 700 takes lighter okay it's good this is good we'll do one more i've enjoyed this because i feel like i've talked to many people right not just one person cheap television yeah you've spoken to everyone except for eric it's great i've loved it you know that this is an investigative program don't you absolutely and we never do an interview unless we've got something on someone okay you have been masquerading i put to you yeah under an assumed name for a long time now right right can we know your real name please oh that's a tricky one it's longer than banner yeah look i'll try it myself but i might pronounce it properly you can have a crack anadanovic very close very close it's croatian everyone goes banner what is it is it italian is it greek is it it's croatian dad's croatian your mum's german yes this is an interesting mix really isn't it it is it's a good it's a it's a good little cocktail it provides some interesting genes yeah yeah it definitely does the ancient greeks believed that fame could be a curse take yourself too seriously they said and the gods will bring you down you come here uninvited go back to your ships and go home so far no sign of that in the stellar career of eric bandanovic from tullamarine ask him about success and he refers us to an earlier australian film the nugget about a bunch of ordinary blokes who strike it rich excuse me mate can we get another one of those mongolian hot pots it's one of my favorite scenes i think in any movie um when lotto takes all his friends out for dinner and you really know that that something special has happened because he orders not one but two mongolian hot pots and that's what it's come down to for him and i think no matter who you are there are always those kind of things that it comes down to well we just ordered the second mongolian hot pot and that says to me we've made it how do you reckon i reckon you've got this stage now where you can always have two mongolians i've i've sometimes ordered three now that success you know you've really made it if you could order three mongolian hot pots and a bit of rice on the side hello i'm charles woolley thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes australia make sure you subscribe to our channel you can also download 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Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 171,171

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Tom Steinfort, Ellen Fanning, Peter Overton, Karl Stefanovic, Ray Martin, Peter Stefanovic, Sarah Abo, eric bana, troy, the castle, mark read, chopper, underbelly, chopper read, orlando bloom, the mulk, marvel cinemas, rachel mcadams, brad pitt, russell crowe, australian movies, NIDA

Id: NQ5h6KDYcuo

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020